A Blast from the Past about the Big Red Boat and Charlevoix Christmas Vacation

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A Blast from the Past about the Big Red Boat and Charlevoix Christmas Vacation

OK, just a little more arrangement of the Titanic’s chairs, reviewing another element of the Rs’ activities. This is related to why the interviewers both in 1997 and 1998 were asking so many questions about the Big Red Boat trip and the Charlevoix Christmas Vacation. It’s appropriate to resurrect some old posts from Why_nut and KoldKase who had some interesting musings about both of these trips.

From Why_nut
Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 6:12 pm

“How long before the planned trip tickets were bought, I think is not specifically known. There are other facts that are certain. The Big Red Boat trip itself, from 1996 through to the end of 1997, only had three options. Either the Ramseys had taken the three-day package, which traveled on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or they took the four-day package, which traveled Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
~RSBM~
“If they had taken the four-day package, leaving on Monday, then there would have been a little more wiggle room for the Charlevoix trip, since they could have spent Thursday and Friday there, then come back to finish packing on Saturday, and flown out on Sunday to be there for a Monday departure. The problem with that scenario is that Patsy would then have been lying when she told her family-newsletter audience that she was celebrating her birthday on the cruise ship, since she would obviously not have been on board yet.”

Did PR even know the details of the trip? It appears JR found the trip in a magazine, phoned the number to set it up.

1998 Interview with Patsy 2 TRIP DeMUTH: Do you remember what
3 carrier?
4 PATSY RAMSEY: No. I think we
5 called Disney at a number you call, and they do
6 some sort of package thing, they put it
7 together, so I don't know, Delta, United or --
8 TRIP DeMUTH: Okay.

1998 interview with JR12 MIKE KANE: Who made those arrangements?
13 JOHN RAMSEY: Patsy made the reservations?
14 MIKE KANE: Was it through the travel agent?
15 JOHN RAMSEY: The travel agent. Actually
16 I think I remember calling Walt Disney directly. I
17 think I might have gotten the number out of a
18 magazine or something. Because I think I remember
19 joining the Disney or somebody like that directly.
~snip~
24 MIKE KANE: So you would fly back in the
25 day before, fly out, I think you said TWA?
0238
1 JOHN RAMSEY: Right.
2 MIKE KANE: And you're leaving on the boat
3 that day or did you fly down and then you would
4 leave the next day?
5 JOHN RAMSEY: No, I think we were doing
6 this boom, boom, boom. Then we were going to be on
7 the boat that night.
8 MIKE KANE: And how long a trip was that
9 going to be?
10 JOHN RAMSEY: It was maybe four days. It
11 was over through New Year's Eve. I don't know if
12 we were came back New Year's day or the next day,
13 but it was a four-day trip.

My take is that JR made the phone call to the agent for Disney and arranged this. He certainly knew more details of the trip than PR who seemed to think, if she wasn’t lying in her ’96 Christmas letter, they’d be on the boat on her birthday. From Why_nut’s review of the timing on the Big Red Boat trip, that wasn’t the case.

Next up is KoldKase’s query about Charlevoix and the Rs’ responses.
KoldKase asked this important question: Why were the kids flying to Minneapolis, instead of flying to Denver from where the entire family could then fly directly to Charlevoix? (Btw, JR claims he purchased the Charlevoix tickets 3 to 4 weeks in advance.)

I checked into this as well and determined the ticket prices between Atlanta and Minneapolis were pretty equivalent to the ticket costs between Atlanta and Denver. Also, in comparing costs, there were additional landing fees and fuel costs in flying to Minneapolis, not to mention more time involved in the total trip to Charlevoix. It would have been cheaper and faster to route the older kids to Denver and then fly all together to Charlevoix.

Interview with Patsy 1997 regarding the Charlevoix tripST: And was everybody on this same page about going to Charlevoix as far as uh, willing and wanting to go. There was no dissention in the ranks that, I don’t want to go or she doesn’t want to go. Everybody was looking forward to this trip?
PR: Well, I mean, we were. I wasn’t real crazy about going cause I just thought it was cramming a lot of stuff in there, you know, I told John I didn’t really want to go. I’d rather, cause, Christmas, going to Charlevoix, then going to, it just seemed like a lot, you know, but then we decided as a family to go and, you know, been looking forward to it.

Interview with JR 1998 about Charlevoix2 JOHN RAMSEY: Well the plan was to leave
3 the morning of the 26th. I had an airplane at the
4 time that was on charter through a charter company
5 run by Mike Archuleta, who is also a friend;
6 became a friend. Mike was going to fly us that
7 morning of the 26th from Jeffco to Minneapolis. We
8 were going to get into Minneapolis before 11 and
9 my older kids were going to arrive from Atlanta.
10 From Atlanta to Minneapolis we were going to pick
11 them up and then go on to Charlevoix.
12 And we did it that way because Charlevoix was a
13 difficult place to get to with airlines. And we
14 were flying from Jeffco to Charlevoix, you fly
15 literally almost fly over Minneapolis. So that
16 would be real easy for us to stop in Minneapolis
17 and pick them up. And they had really inexpensive
18 tickets to get there on the airlines. So that was
19 the plan.
20 They we were going to stay there for I think it
21 was till Friday. I forget what day the 26th was.
22 (INAUDIBLE) but we were going to stay for a couple
23 days and come back to Boulder around Friday. Then
24 I think the next morning on Saturday, we were
25 going to leave for this Big Red Boat trip with
0089
1 just JonBenet, Burke and Patsy and me. And that
2 was a package deal. We had tickets on TWA and that
3 was all kind of pretty pre-laid out for us.

It’s fairly evident here that PR did not really know details about the Big Red Boat trip. However, JR knew the length of the trip and the air carrier and admits to calling the Disney number.

Regarding Charlevoix, it’s glaring that Patsy did not mention the Charlevoix trip in her ’96 Christmas newsletter. This letter had been written after Dec. 17, as one may deduce from the fact that she had shared JB’s win of the Colorado Little Miss Christmas award at the Dec. 17 AllStars Pageant. (http://www.acandyrose.com/1996christmasnewsletter.htm ) It’s also clear that she appreciated her 40th birthday bash and was looking forward to the Big Red Boat trip. Yet she omitted any mention of the Charlevoix Christmas Vacation. Did Patsy not endorse this trip or can one conclude JR had not, as of Dec. 17, shared the details of the Charlevoix trip? IDK.

But something else struck me in re-examining these plans and responses. BPD was not willing to allow JR to be interviewed before PR was interviewed in the year 2000. They told LW the interview arrangements were off if they couldn’t interview PR first. I now consider there was a specific reason BPD wished to interview Patsy first, and it was likely they had a theory who was responsible for directing the Rs’ storyline.

My posts are my opinion, protected under the Freedom of Speech Amendment